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Sunday, March 18, 2012

03182012 Sunday in Lent 4

May the
words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight,
O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.AMEN.

Let us
pray, Lord Jesus Christ, the iniquity of our sins fell on You while on the
cross of Calvary.You are sinless and
yet became sin in order to set us free from that which binds us.Enable us to embrace the freedom offered to
us through Your sacrifice of Your innocent death for all of us saints gathered
here at Emmanuel.AMEN.

While
watching Iron Man and Iron Man 2 with Michele, I am continually amazed about
the number of sermon illustrations and applications that God can highlight for
me in current blockbuster movies.In
Iron Man, Tony Stark, billionaire weapons contractor comes to a humbling
reality that his weapons not only caused himself to suffer with the shrapnel
encroaching on his heart, but those weapons have caused the entire world to be
impacted.After creating an arc reactor
to power the device that keeps him alive, he creates a suit to rescue himself
from his captors.After overpowering his
captors and ‘rocketing’ away Tony is in front of a room of reporters where he
determines that his legacy will no longer be weapons of mass destruction.The iniquities of his previous life have
impacted his life greatly and Tony Stark wants to change his course and help
humanity.

6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has
turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us
all To fall on Him.

Simply said, we are sinful creatures.We were conceived in sin and though made in
the image of God we are as Martin Luther says, simul ustus et pecator ‘simultaneously saint and sinner’ all at the
same time.We cannot separate out our
sins, but these sins we commit on a daily basis are what fell on Jesus
Christ.While in the hands of the Jews,
the Roman soldiers, the journey to Calvary and upon the Cross, Jesus Christ
felt the full burden of all of our collective sins of the entire world.A very inexact comparison is to try and
compare it to weight, but the burden of sin that Jesus carried for each and
every one of us is an infinite amount of sins, because this was for the entire
world.

Jesus Christ Who bore our sins was sinless
Himself.Jesus Christ sinless man born
of the Virgin Mary, Who came down from heaven and redeemed us was sinless. Paul
says, “Jesus Christ knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21).In His humanity Jesus Christ suffered for our sins and bore the pain of
our sins on the Cross of Calvary.This
was the plan of salvation and the way in which Jesus Christ sinless Man would
atone for our sins and for the sins of humanity on the Cross of Calvary.

For Jesus Christ became sin for us.John the Baptist in the Gospel of John says,
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (John
1:29).Jesus purpose on earth was to
redeem mankind and offer to us eternal life.We who have been baptized into Christ, like Danielle this past Wednesday
and all of us who have been washed in the Waters of Baptism are set free from
the bonds of sin, because Jesus became sin for us.We have been set free from our sin (John
8:34, 36), because of our delivery from the guilt and punishment of sin that
Jesus Christ bore on the Cross of Calvary and that we have been baptized into
the life, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior.Our names are written in the book of life and
Jesus Christ calls us through the Holy Spirit Who is active in and among us
each today.

Jesus Christ Who was marred, despised and
forsaken, bore our griefs and cares and was afflicted in order to quiet the
Kings who asked the question, ‘Who has believed’?Jesus Christ even endured scourging, bruising
piercing having our iniquity and sin fall upon Him on the cross in order to
offer to all of us gathered here at Emmanuel today eternal life.For Jesus did not come to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through Him and His death on the Cross of
Calvary for the entire world, including all of us saints gathered here at
Emmanuel this morning.AMEN.